Rayno: The U basketball coaching search is over

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April 4, 2013 - 7:15 PM

Well then, I think it's time to have a decent meal.

It's been a crazy week and a half, beginning with spending about eight hours of frantic work in the Austin airport after former coach Tubby Smith was fired on March 25. I missed the press conference, which was that day, the day after the Gophers had been eliminated from the NCAA tournament by Florida -- and instead spent the hours huddling by a plug on the floor making a bunch of calls.

My sources had told me it would happen quick, and well, it certainly did. And then the whirlwind started.

What followed was a hellacious week and a half that quite honestly I wouldn't wish on anyone (I was warned about this in Austin by multiple members of the media, and still I didn't believe them). Constantly calling sources that don't want to talk or are nervous to talk at all or on the record, considering the hush order that was placed on university employees. Scraping for bits of information. Straining for stories to keep the search going -- even when there wasn't much actually going on. And Twitter -- normally a place of news, interesting tidbits, fun interactions and the requisite number of jerks -- became of flood of endless negativity.

My suitcase didn't get unpacked, laundry and dishes piled and I ate an inadvisable amount of delivery pizza.

There is something immediately fun about covering a breaking news story -- the urgency and mystery of it, I suppose -- but when that story stretches out for a week and a half, with minimal hints, clues and willing sources (while the urgency remains high), well, it can wear on a person.

It wast the first coaching search I've covered in my career, and frankly, I learned a lot.

Even more frankly: I banged my head against a wall A LOT. And threw things. Breakable things. But no cats. Nothing died.

I will stop the (light-hearted) complaints there because the truth is I really do love my job most of the time.

When it was announced Richard Pitino has agreed in principle to become the Gophers new head coach today, however, I simply loved that this particular chunk of it was over.

Over the next few days, I will be bringing you much more about the young Pitino and the situation he comes into. For now, however, I will leave you with all of our work at the Star Tribune today.

And for those of you on Twitter that aren't crazy (you know who you are), thanks for being you. Cheers to that and now I'm getting a drink.